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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

DARPA Grand Challenge Qualifiers Set For Tomorrow

DARPA's robotic race program, the DARPA Grand Challenge, gears up tomorrow in Fontana in a national qualification event. The qualifier is a lead into the DARPA Grand Challenge, set for October 8, and pits robotic ground vehicles in a race to navigate, unaided, 150 miles through the desert. The event promises a $2M price to the team that is able to complete the challenge, designed to advance automonous robotic vehicle technology. Tomorrow's qualifier event will whittle down a field of forty three teams to twenty finalists, who will complete at the final event on October 8th. The teams participating this year in the qualifiers include a large number of Southern California teams, including a team from Caltech, Thousand Oaks-based SciAutonics, a team from Palos Verdes High School, Westlake Village-based Axion Racing, Automous Vehicle Systems out of San Diego, a team out of San Juan Capistrano named the CyberRiders, Team AION from Carlsbad, Team Banzai from Irvine, and many others.